Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. judge forces breathalyzer to open source

Tom Sanders writes in vnunet.com:

A panel of judges in the Florida county of Sarasota has granted a request by a group of over 150 accused drunk drivers to view the source code of the breathalyzer that was used to determine their breath alcohol level.

Attorneys for the defendants had filed a motion to review the source code for the Intoxilyzer 5000 breathalyzer in October.

"The defendants have established that the source code is material to their theory of defence in these cases," judges David Denkin, Kimberly Bonner and Judy Goldman wrote in their ruling that was dated 2 November.

"It is therefore ordered and adjudged that the State shall produce the source code for the EPROMs located in the Intoxilyzer 5000 instruments […] within 15 days of this order."

An Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM) is a chip that holds the software running the breathalyzer.

posted by Fergie @ 11/02/2005 03:25:00 PM